[Event] 2024 Gaming Challenge

Hi I would like to join this challenge too lol. I am gonna try to beat 20 games (probably not gonna happen but it's worth a try...)

I have already completed 3 games this year already so I guess my progress is at 3/20 now. (Milk inside a bag of milk and Mouth Sweet and Tales of Arise)

Edit: Forgot to mention Tales of Arise whoops

I don't want to pressure myself much with higher number, so let's go with the same number as the last year - 25 games.

I'd like to join the challenge as well; I'm going to try and beat 15 games.

I will try to beat 10 games, since it's my first time.

I was new to the site last year and missed out on this form of the challenge, so I'm totally in this year. I'm going to take on 20 games. That's 12 for each challenge month, plus an extra 8
in the event that some turn out to be on the shorter side.

Hi there,
I fancy joining in. Aside from my own backlog, I'd like to throw in the games I am clearing for the 2024 League Challenge Retroachievements if that's possible. I don't have a set number of games to clear in mind, but if I have to come up with a number, then I'd say at least 20.

Put me down for 25 games, please! Whether it's the 25 I have planned or otherwise, I will definitely hit that goal this year.

I'll go for 30 games this year and we'll see if I need to bump that.

I still have a whole bunch of unplayed Switch games lying around so I'll be gunning for 20 games to do some more backlog clean-up.

I'm at 2/15 so far wheee

January
Let's continue this small tradition of looking back at the previous month. I was pretty productive in January. I finally finished Xenoblade Chronicles 3. It took me almost a year to finish it. And I'm not sure if it was really worth it. And then I beat Baldur's Gate 3, which was the pinnacle of the month. I spent about 80 hours in both games, but the difference between them is like day and night. I also got through Yu-Gi-Oh! RUSH DUEL: Dawn of the Battle Royale!!, which was really disappointing. A card game with no (official) way to build your own deck. And with bunch of other weird gameplay decisions. And in the end of the month, I also finally beat The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. What a great Zelda game. I think I'll tackle the rest of Zelda games (that I still haven't beat yet) one day.

Games beaten this month:
Xenoblade Chronicles 3
Yu-Gi-Oh! RUSH DUEL: Dawn of the Battle Royale!!
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
Baldur's Gate 3

[4/25]

Not really off to a fantastic start this year... I only beat two games in January. u_u

January

1. Thimbleweed Park
2. Down in Bermuda

Year to date: 2/30

I just finished my second game this year, a bit late for a January post, but early enough to not feel too bad about it.

1- FTL: Faster Than Light
2- Arcadia Fallen

2 outa 20 babee

1) Super Mario Sunshine (Super Mario 3D All Stars).

All in all an enjoyable game. I disliked the no-water levels quite strongly, they were pretty hard. Seemed to be getting easier in later levels, but perhaps I was just starting to adjust to the difficulty, idk.

That Watermelon rolling level was by far the most infuriating one, though there were more enjoyable levels than bad/hard ones.
Some of the hidden shines and blue coins were way too dang obscure though. I looked them up and am not ashamed of it either, a whole bunch of them would be almost impossible to find naturally.

The game was a bit glitchy/buggy at times, like glitching through things. Pretty old game though, to be expected I guess.
I found the camera very annoying at times. It clips to surfaces far too easily and then it won't budge for a good while and regaining control of it becomes a challenge. Though perhaps pressing the stick could solve that. Didn't learn about the first person camera until pretty late into the game though, as the game just never mentions it.


2) Super Mario Galaxy (Super Mario 3D All-Stars)

Far more enjoyable game than Sunshine was. Not as many hard levels, in the main game anyway. The Gyro sections and the pull star stuff is not that easy to do on a Lite and just turned into a drag. The only level I detest before the credits was the Boo race in Ghostly Galaxy, though I also hate that accursed Spring Mario powerup.
I absolutely loved the little 'story time with your children' thing Rosalina had going on in the Library though

Anyway the maingame is really good, only a couple things dragging it down.
The postgame though, those purple coin levels? Now most of those were a pain in the neck. Like roughly half of them at least were just unnecessarily painful.
I did not bother replaying the game with Luigi, I already saw the credits twice and my save with Mario is marked complete.


3) New Super Lucky's Tale

A very fun game to play. Some levels bordered on being an RPG with mini quests to do, but with platforming needed to get around.
There are a couple pretty challenging levels, but most of them are just fun levels to play =D
In the basegame the level that killed me the most was the final boss, mainly during it's lengthy second phase.

The bonus world was good, except for that ghost that has to guide you level. That one was just not fun to do.
The costumes gave a purpose to collecting coins, but... I didn't make much use of them. Randomly bought a couple at some point and just kept wearing the same outfit till postgame lol


Games finished:
1) Super Mario Sunshine (Super Mario 3D All Stars).
2) Super Mario Galaxy (Super Mario 3D All-Stars)
3) New Super Lucky's Tale

3/20 games

February

1. Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair
2. Muse Dash
3. Cat Museum
4. Professor Layton and the Curious Village HD
5. Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls

Year to date: 7/30

I had a better showing in February than January!

February
Phew, what a month this was. I focused more on my work-related stuff and got into (probably not healthy) grindset this month. I was travelling for work and decided to use my time away from everyone and everything that coud serve as a distraction to write my dissertation project proposal. I think it's called that way in english. Basically, before I can conduct my dissertation research, I have to write 30 pages of theoretical background and research design and everything around it and then defend it in front of a commission. Aside from that I'm apparently popular with our bachelor students, because all of them wanted me to be their supervisor for their thesis. For context, I was a supervisor for 1 bachelor student before. Now another 10 students want me to be their supervisor. So I had a lot of work with all the paperwork. Which meant I barely had any time for gaming, but especially to write about it here in my journal. And I mean it. I beat Hyperbolica on the 2nd of February and finished Lies of P shortly after that. I even beat Pikmin 4 like a day or two after that, which I'll write about a short review now. It was really a hard month. But the games were great. Hyperbolica is a mind-blowing experience that I recommend to everyone to try. Lies of P is great Souls-like game, probably my second or third favourite. It had some problems with boring bosses from time to time, but the level design and the world were amazing. Pikmin 4 is a cute game. I enjoyed the main gameplay loop, but looking back, I wish I didn't decide to 100% it.

Games beaten this month:
Hyperbolica
Lies of P
Pikmin 4

[7/25]

My plans for March are simple... I'm still in the working-mode and will be in it for at least half the March. So my main gaming tool will be Switch. I got the Persona bundle recently and started playing Persona 3 Portable. From my short time with it, it's rought around edges, full of boring grind, but also pretty fun and I think I'll finish it. I also plan on playing Untitled Goose Game for this month's Game-Along.

4) Transformers: EarthSpark - Expedition

Wasn't sure what to expect of this game. Bought it to give it a try. It was very fun to play =D
The three areas were fairly big and had a decent amount of things to do spread out around them... just wish they locked less stuff behind upgrades you don't get until later.

Some buggy stuff here and there unfortunately. Bumblebee got stuck in place once and I had to wait for an enemy to hit me to be freed. The Grimlock boss fight locked up due to Grimlock bugging out, forcing me to leave and re-enter. Also had a crash at some point. Fairly minor things in the end, which didn't stop the game from being very fun =3
Kinda wish it was longer though. Took me roughly 10 hours to finish it.

Story was solid, but as far as the graphical style goes I like that of the two Transformers games I once played on Steam far more. It was a solid style though, nonetheless.


5) Balan Wonderworld

The core gameplay for this game is actually really solid and like 90% of the time it's very enjoyable. As such the game itself is not bad imo.

It's a pity that it was rather buggy and had several general performance issues for me, however. Could just be a bad Switch port or related to me playing it on a Switch Lite, but still.
I fell off the stage or took an unnecessary hit a multitude of times due to the game freezing for a second or lagging up. It's definitely not in every game as I looked up some things a couple times during my playthrough and those people's games didn't have that laggyness that I had at all!
As for bugs I encountered a door that couldn't be opened despite me pushing the required block onto the required switch to open it. Nothing happened and it would've required beating the boss again to reset it, but I just used 2 lategame powerups to navigate around it instead =3
There was also a level where the platforms were showing on my screen, but they weren't solid and I just fell through.

The Balan Bout minigame would've been fine with me if they hadn't insisted on having you get all "excellent" timings on every QTE press. The minigame takes quite a while with a sporadic QTE press, up to 6 QTE timings in the later levels. Miss even 1 by not getting an excellent on it and you already miss the Golden statue for it. And in order to retry it you have to leave the level and go beat the boss for that level again and then load back in just to try it once more. I passed on completing these and don't regret it at all xD

Also really wish they would've given you infinite costumes after beating the final boss, for the ones you've already found that is. Restocking the really good costumes that you pretty much need in the later game over and over and over was getting pretty hecking annoying near the end.

Took me a really long time to finish playing this game due to general business on my end, but I checked my play time and it said 45 hours or more so... it took longer than I thought it did as well. It's really good mileage for a quite enjoyable 8 euro game imo lol



1) Super Mario Sunshine (Super Mario 3D All Stars).
2) Super Mario Galaxy (Super Mario 3D All-Stars)
3) New Super Lucky's Tale
4) Transformers: EarthSpark - Expedition
5) Balan Wonderworld


5/20 games

March

1. Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony
2. Assassin's Creed III: Liberation
3. Doronko Wanko

Year to date: 10/30

I played a few more games than this but haven't actually finished them yet... so hopefully next month will be a beefier update as I wrap those up. Although I'm also like a third of the way through my goal for the year so I'm still on pace.

March
I continued on with my work-focused mode, but still found some time to finish few games. I beat Persona 3 Portable. It was fun, but certainly a product of its time. But good enough for me to give the rest of the series a try. I also finally got around bedding Marvel's Spider-man: Miles Morales. It was fine, but not as good as the original. And I also got through few indie games - Untitled Goose Game, which was good game with a twist on a puzzle and stealth games, and Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion, which didn't really click with me. It had poor gameplay, but cool and interesting world and lore.

Games beaten this month:
Persona 3 Portable
Marvel's Spider-man: Miles Morales
Untitled Goose Game
Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion

[11/25]

My plans for April are pretty simple. I got Dragon's Dogma 2 and I'm slowly getting through it. I also want to continue on with Persona series, so Persona 4 Golden it is.